In bed side by side, back to back, front to front, back to front, top and tail, Oriwia would tell her sister what she’d read in newspapers or love books. She described giant, beautiful heroes with lightly furrowed brows, and heroines with cream skin and lovely eyes. Sometimes they talked about what the men they would marry would look like, and when Moana-Rose reminded Oriwia that she was going to marry Aki she’d say, ‘I know. I’m just talking about my pretend husband.’ They discussed movies they’d seen or what they’d like to see when certain pictures came to show at their hall. On and on they chatted until the hour came when Moana-Rose said what Oriwia was waiting for her to say: ‘Tell me about our mother.’ The comfort of the telling would send them to sleep. In the morning, neither would remember at which point talk had ceased and dreams begun.

‘Get up. Hurry up,’ Oriwia would say in the morning, in English, to Moana-Rose, as though English was the language of urgency. They would hear Jimmy out in the kitchen lighting the stove.

‘Why are you always snooty in the mornings?’ Moana-Rose would ask, also speaking in English.

After the loss of Moana-Rose, whom she had never been parted from even for a day, there was an empty half bed that she could never bring herself to occupy, and a whole night stretching out in front of her like an expanding beam of dark light.

Oriwia retired later and later as time went on, working until overtaken by the necessity to sleep, which she would do for three or four hours before daylight. Although she found companionship in her daily contacts, those empty places, the feeling of abandonment – especially after her father died – remained until she married Chappy. After four years of marriage, Chappy had ridden off on his bicycle.

But she had children. She had businesses to run, a house to build and land to attend to.

After a time there were weddings to arrange and babies to care for.

When Noelani was eighteen months old, her brother Tiaki was born. Oriwia was pleased to take over the night-time care of Noelani, bathing her and putting her to bed. If her granddaughter was unsettled, Oriwia would put her in her own big bed and lie down beside her until she went to sleep. She’d leave her there for the rest of the night, where Noelani, who had often been wakeful in the past, would sleep until morning, occupying that yawn, that space, that empty place.